Field of Honor
by aubreysmom
Summary: Dedicated to those who personified American spirit on September 11, 2001, in a jetliner forever remembered as United Airlines Flight 93. COMPLETE


**Field of Honor**

By aubreysmom

_Dedicated to those who personified American spirit on 9/11,_

_in a jetliner forever remembered as United Airlines Flight 93…_

_-!-_

**Author's note: **This story contains the actual names of two of the passengers who were aboard Flight 93; I have not singled them out for any reason except that they seemed like the two that members of our team might have known. The events themselves are as close to accurate as I could make them, though obviously we have no real way of knowing what was going on within the offices of the FBI at the time.

Tom Burnett's wife did call 911 that day after her husband contacted her from Flight 93. She was eventually transferred to someone at the FBI.

The details of the Flight 93 heroes is drawn from a documentary that premiered on the Discovery Channel Sunday, 11 September 2005, entitled _The Flight that Fought Back_. The film is available to own on DVD (check the Discovery Channel Store website), and 100 of the purchase price will go toward the Flight 93 National Memorial Fund. You may find more information at The National Parks website.

_11 September 2005_

_10:00 a.m._

The vast field was unusually quiet, empty save for the fluttering flags and ribbons wrapped around the wooden angels decked out in red, white, and blue. 150,000 visitors a year passed through this place, a tribute to courage in the face of insurmountable tragedy. Nearby, a stand of hemlock trees, solid and strong, kept sentinel watch over the scarred face of the land, even four years later.

A single rental car approached, breaking the silence. It pulled to a stop, and two figures emerged, men both, on a single day's leave from work. They were silent as they walked over to the makeshift fence erected for leaving tributes.

One man reached out and ran his hand across one of the angels, which bore the name _Richard Guadagno_. Tears filled the corners of bright blue eyes, and the man cleared his voice slightly to fight them back.

His companion was gazing at a photograph; a man with his wife and three daughters. _Thomas E. Burnett, Jr._

"Friend of yours, mate?" The first man turned finally.

The other nodded. "Of a sort. Tom started his medical training at Harvard. We met across a tennis court a few times, stayed in touch intermittently." He pointed to the angel his friend had been occupied with a moment ago. "You?"

A nod in return. "Rich and I did that tracking course together. Pays off when you run a Federal game preserve."

A breeze ruffled the collection of tributes, as if stirring the souls of those who rested in this place. Bobby Manning nodded to a makeshift bench someone had set up, just a board nailed to a couple of wide logs. "Feel like staying a bit?"

Myles Leland nodded. "It seems fitting, since we had so little time to do just that, four years ago."

The Aussie moved first, resting his arms on his knees. "Too right." His mind slid back…

_Hoover Building, Washington, D.C. - __11 September 2001 - __9:30 am_

"_Well, tell me something I can make some use of!" He watched as Myles slammed down the phone._

_The Bullpen, the whole building, was in chaos; two jetliners had been hijacked and slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. People were running around in a tightly controlled alarm, but the information coming in was so jumbled that it was nearly impossible to make any headway._

"_Anything?" Bobby asked._

"_No," his deskmate growled, "Or, nothing we didn't know ten minutes ago."_

"_Guys?" Tara Williams was staring at the screen, which had a display of the Air Traffic Control radar for a fair part of the Eastern Seaboard. It was weeding out remarkably fast, considering how many planes had to get on the ground so quickly, but there were still a great many flights to ground. They looked up to see a plane's flight path doubling back on itself. The transponder read "AA77."_

"_Where's it headed?" Jack Hudson's voice was tense._

"_Back to D.C.," the computer tech replied. "It's—" Suddenly, the transponder signal vanished. Tara was on her keyboard instantly. "It's gone, Jack. They turned it off. They could be headed anywhere within a fifty-mile radius."_

_Bobby found himself glancing at the clock: 9:35 a.m. If anyone had told him that he'd wake up this morning to a day unlike any other America had ever faced, he'd have laughed them into the Potomac. Until a Boeing767, loaded to the gills with jet fuel for a trip out of Boston to Los Angeles, ripped open the New York skyline. Television sets around the Bullpen kept tabs on what was happening in the Big Apple, but now their focus had to be here, in D.C._

_He heard Myles' phone ring again. The blond agent answered it before the first ring ended. "Special Agent Myles Leland," came the crisp, resonant voice. He listened for only a minute, jotting a note down on the legal pad nearby. "All right, Mrs. Burnett. Thank you for telling us."_

_He hung up and faced the group. "That was a relay from a 911 call out of San Rafael, California. Apparently—"_

_But he never got to finish; every phone in the place lit up like Christmas, and Dimitrius Gans came sprinting through the doorway. "The Pentagon's just been hit. Emergency teams are responding. The Director wants every Federal office building cleared now – use your cells, because we're bugging out, too. Inside of fifteen minutes, we'll be switching to a mobile field office on the Mall." He pointed around the room, his voice rapid-fire. " Myles, Supreme Court; Bobby, the Capitol; Tara, Library of Congress; Lucy, the Smithsonian. Jack, get the Federal Building. Move!"_

_The note on the legal pad was left behind as they all dashed to grab whatever they needed for field operations and to make their calls. It wouldn't be remembered until much later… in the scheme of things…_

Bobby leaned back on his hands, turning his mind from the chaos of that day to the peacefulness of the surroundings, tilting his head back to take in the early fall sunshine. Only then did he realize that Myles had never joined him on the bench, but was walking slowly along the perimeter of where a national memorial would one day stand.

The Aussie started to rise to follow, but then decided to give his friend a little space. He sank back onto the bench and remembered the good times he and Richard had during the week-long course.

-!-

-&-

-!-

-&-

Myles let his feet drag slightly through the damp grass, looking around and envisioning the memorial in its finished stages. The project was slated to take over 50 years to complete; not the memorial itself, but plans to restore the land itself. Over time, the landscape would heal in harmony with the hearts of the American people.

For himself, time might lessen the pain, but nothing would ever erase the memories of that day. Everything happened so fast, too fast for them to even get organized, let alone try to stop it from getting worse…

_Remote Field Office - __The Mall, Washington D.C. - __9:43 a.m._

_Considering how fast they'd had to move, things were set up in record time, and they were back on the phones and computers, data spewing in from all directions. There was little doubt now that the three planes were connected, and this was a terrorist attack on American soil._

_There wasn't even time to consider the irony of it – jet liners, symbol of American and global interaction, big friendly flying buses carrying businessmen and grandparents and grandchildren, that had suddenly become missiles aimed at the greatest symbols of US prosperity and power. That would have to come later._

"_Hey guys…" Tara was pounding on her laptop again. "I just got a call from the FAA. There's a fourth plane that's been hijacked."_

_Myles spun around; Jack and D were in a pow-wow with the higher-ups, and Lucy was helping Bobby compile the information they were getting and make some sense out of it. "Which, and where?"_

"_United Airlines Flight 93. It was traveling from Newark to San Francisco. Took off at 8:28, 30 minutes late because of heavy traffic on the tarmac; an hour later, near Cleveland, it was hijacked. I guess some of the passengers got through to the ground on their cell phones."_

_Myles suddenly remembered the phone call he'd taken. "Where is it headed?"_

_Tara's eyes were wide. "It doubled back on its route, but the transponder was turned off a couple minutes ago. There was a visual; but now, it could be headed here, or New York, or anywhere in between."_

_His heart sank. "How many on board?" he asked softly._

"_Forty."_

"_Can't they get fighters up there?" Lucy asked, having overheard the conversation._

"_Where, Luce? And the FAA is still trying to decide what to do and who to have give the order. It's their call, not ours." He turned back to Tara. "Tara, can you get hold of the United Airlines control center in Cleveland? Then at least we'd know—"_

_A shower of gasps and screams spun them all around to stare at the TV screen a few yards away. They watched in horror as the South Tower of the World Trade Center plummeted to the pavement of Lower Manhattan._

"_Dear God…" Bobby whispered. All eyes were riveted on the screen._

"_Myles." Tara's voice broke through his thoughts. "I just got through to the United control center in Cleveland. They said they're getting some strange noise over the radio. It sounds as if the passengers are trying to ram their way into the cockpit with the beverage cart. There's a lot of screaming and yelling going on." _

_She pulled her phone call onto the speakerphone just in time for them to hear the familiar whistle-whine of an aircraft descending out of control. A minute later, all was silence._

_Myles and Tara stared at each other. "Where?" He finally whispered. "Do they know where it went down?"_

_She shook her head. Somewhere between Cleveland and DC is as close as they can guess." At the look on his face, she picked up the phone again. "I'll find out as fast as I can."_

_Within five minutes, she had their answer. "UA Flight 93 crashed in an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was only fifteen minutes out of DC. The very first 'draft theory' is that it was headed for the Capitol." Her voice broke slightly. "The initial report indicates there's practically nothing left."_

_Myles looked around the makeshift command center; in every direction, people were focused on the other two disaster sites. They were the only two who realized that forty Americans, who on any other day likely had very little in common, had prevented the 9/11 tragedy from being even more devastating than it was._

"_Tara," he said, grabbing his coat, "tell Jack what's happened. And tell him I'm going up there. I'll call him with a report as soon as I can." …_

It wasn't until a week later, when he finally got a chance to look at the passenger lists, that he realized the call he'd gotten had been from the wife of his old college tennis partner. From what little even he knew of Tom Barnett, he wasn't surprised at all by what had happened. That the reports indicated that _all_ of the passengers had decided unanimously to take action renewed his faith in the American spirit.

The events of that day would never leave him; as an FBI agent, he'd likely live with the results of September 11, 2001, for the rest of his career. But, as he stood in the silent serenity of an empty field in Pennsylvania, a measure of peace entered his soul.

"Makes you realize that 'American' still means something besides the fact that people on the other end of the world are screaming for your blood, doesn't it?" Bobby had come up behind him as he'd wandered back to the tribute fence.

Myles nodded silently, then reached out his finger to trace the words as he read the inscription on a small quilt at the center of the fence: "A common field one day. A field of honor forever. _May all who visit this place remember the collective acts of courage and sacrifice of the passengers and crew, revere this hallowed ground as the final resting place of those heroes, and reflect on the power of individuals who choose to make a difference._"

FINIS

(the quote on the quilt is from Captain Steven Ruda, Los Angeles City Fire Department)


End file.
